Coming Out to the Streets: LGBTQ Youth Experiencing Homelessness

By Brandon Andrew Robinson

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth are disproportionately represented in the U.S. youth homelessness population. In Coming Out to the Streets, Brandon Andrew Robinson examines their lives.
 
Based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in central Texas, Coming Out to the Streets looks into the LGBTQ youth's lives before they experience homelessness—within their families, schools, and other institutions—and later when they navigate the streets, deal with police, and access shelters and other services. Through this documentation, Brandon Andrew Robinson shows how poverty and racial inequality shape the ways that the LGBTQ youth negotiate their gender and sexuality before and while they are experiencing homelessness. To address LGBTQ youth homelessness, Robinson contends that solutions must move beyond blaming families for rejecting their child. In highlighting the voices of the LGBTQ youth, Robinson calls for queer and trans liberation through systemic change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Nov 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9780520971073

Brandon Andrew Robinson

Brandon Andrew Robinson is Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Riverside and coauthor of Race and Sexuality.

Book preview

Coming Out to the Streets

The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Anne G. Lipow Endowment Fund in Social Justice and Human Rights.

Coming Out to the Streets

LGBTQ YOUTH EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS

Brandon Andrew Robinson

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press

Oakland, California

© 2020 by Brandon Andrew Robinson

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Robinson, Brandon Andrew, author.

Title: Coming out to the streets : the lives of LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness / Brandon Andrew Robinson.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020014432 (print) | LCCN 2020014433 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520299269 (hardback) | ISBN 9780520299276 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520971073 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Sexual minority youth—Texas. | Homeless teenagers—Texas.

Classification: LCC HQ76.27.Y68 R635 2020 (print) | LCC HQ76.27.Y68 (ebook) | DDC 306.760835—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014432

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014433

Manufactured in the United States of America

27  26  25  24  23  22  21  20

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

To LGBTQ people looking for a place to call home

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Coming Out to the Streets

1. Reframing Family Rejection: Growing Up Poor and LGBTQ

2. Queer Control Complex: The Punishing Production of LGBTQ Youth

3. New Lavender Scare: Policing and the Criminalization of LGBTQ Youth Homelessness

4. Queer Street Smarts: LGBTQ Youth Navigating Homelessness

5. Respite, Resources, Rules, and Regulations: Homonormative Governmentality and LGBTQ Shelter Life

Conclusion: There’s No Place Like Home

Appendix: Compassionate Detachment and Being a Volunteer Researcher

Notes

References

Index

Acknowledgments

Every time that I return to this book, I think not only about the amazing and loving youth who fill its pages, but also about the many other people who helped touch my life and my thinking. I am profoundly grateful to so many of you. And I owe you so much more than an acknowledgment. Please know that this book would have been impossible without you.

My gratitude begins with Gloria González-López. Gloria fervently supported this project from the moment that I told her that I wanted to study LGBTQ youth homelessness. Gloria’s unwavering championing of my work gave me the strength and confidence to do this research. In wanting to be a part of a new generation of sexualities scholars who promote human rights and progressive social policies, I could not have asked for a finer mentor. Gloria has told me since day one to do work that is urgently needed and to do work that matters. I hope this book lives up to that motto—a motto that I will take with me throughout the rest of my life.

Deb Umberson coming into my life was also a game changer. Deb is an exemplar sociologist and mentor. I am grateful for all the time and feedback Deb has spent on bestowing to me her indispensable expertise. Deb has a far-reaching impact in our field, and this impact includes her mentorship and training of the next generation of scholars. Thank you, Deb, for everything. I’ve grown so much as an academic and as a person because of you.

For Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, there are no words to express my deep thanks and gratitude. As a mentor, a coauthor, and a friend, Salvador has supported and shaped me into the scholar that I am today. All my academic pursuits, including this book, are because of the foundation that Salvador has provided for me intellectually. I truly don’t believe I would be where I am today without him. Thank you for seeing something in me and for guiding me all these years.

I am also thankful for other scholars who supported me while I was at the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you to Sharmila Rudrappa, Stephen Russell, and Amy Stone for working with me throughout the stages of this project. Thank you, as well, to Simone Browne for showing me how to be brave and fearless and to do work that leaves an impact on this world. For their intellectual and personal support, thank you to Christine Williams, Mary Rose, and Shannon Cavanaugh.

To my friends during my time in Texas, thank you for everything. Thank you to Emily Spangenberg, Chelsea Smith Gonzalez, Beth Cozzolino, Maggie Tate, Rachel Donnelly, Sam Simon, Esther Sullivan, and Laura Kaufmann for all the fun times and conversations. A special thank-you to Kate Averett, not only for her queer friendship but also for transcribing my interviews with the service providers. Thank you to Shantel Buggs for being one of the greatest friends a person could ask for and for your brilliance and heart. Thank you as well to Amy Lodge for being an amazing friend, for the memories, and for the many hours of hearing all my ideas, over and over again.

I owe many thanks also to my writing group—Anima Adjepong, Shameka Powell, and Joseph Ewoodzie—for the years of feedback on this book. Anima and Shameka have read every chapter of this book—sometimes more than once—and I am so grateful for all their labor in making this book better. I appreciate the academic and intellectual standard you both always hold me to. I also appreciate the feedback I received on various chapters and ideas from Michela Musto, Stefan Vogler, Susila Gurusami, Meg Neely, and Jen Delfino. To Bernadette Barton and Jason Wasserman, thank you for reviewing this book, for supporting this work, and for all the invaluable feedback. I am forever grateful, as well, to Rachel Schmitz, who has not only provided incisive comments on this book but has also been the best coauthor someone could ask for in this academic life of trying to make the world better for LGBTQ youth. I’m so thankful for that random elevator encounter at ASA that brought us together. I am also thankful for another ASA encounter that happened: meeting Julia Meszaros, who is now a dear friend. Thank you also to Tristan Bridges for all your support of my work.

This project would not have been possible without the financial support I received in conducting this research and in writing. The National Science Foundation supported the last leg of the fieldwork and interviews. The Equality Knowledge Project at Eastern Michigan University helped to support data collection and allowed me to present some early findings at their campus. At the University of Texas at Austin, thank you to the Sociology Department, the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, the College of Liberal Arts, and the Graduate School for their financial support.

I am also grateful for the University of California President’s and Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship program. Being a UC Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of California, Riverside, gave me the time to truly read, think, and write. I am deeply thankful for my postdoctoral mentor, Jane Ward, and for Ellen Reese, who supported me during this time as well. A special thank-you to my postdoctoral colleague Brittany Morey, who made navigating the postdoctoral program the most enjoyable. Kimberly Adkinson is a godsend in all that she does for this program. Thank you to Mark Lawson for continuing to lead and advocate for such an important fellowship program and experience.

Moving to Los Angeles also changed my life. I am so thankful for my LA friends who have enriched my world in ways that they don’t even know. Thank you to Christina Moses, Brian Haag, Victor Rico, Oliver Udom, Gerry Gorospe, Bari Sofer, Kiki Stevens, Amanda Kuehl, and Todd Gilchrist. Y’all have made Los Angeles an even better paradise than it already was. I am also grateful to have found an academic home in the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Being among colleagues committed to feminist and queer social justice is a dream come true. Thank you to Juliann Allison, Alicia Arrizón, Crystal Baik, Amalia Cabezas, Katja Guenther, Sherine Hafez, Tammy Ho, Anthonia Kalu, Jade Sasser, Chikako Takeshita, and Jane Ward. Sherine has been an amazing and supportive chair. Thank you as well to Jane and Crystal for all the love and support.

At UC Press, I am thankful for my editor, Naomi Schneider. I am also thankful for all the editorial assistants—Renee Donovan, Benjy Malings, and Summer Farah—who touched this book along its journey. Thank you, as well, to the rest of the UC Press team for shepherding this book through production. A special thank you to Gary J. Hamel for copyediting the book and to Jon Dertien and BookComp, Inc. for managing the production of the book. Thank you to Cathy Hannabach and Ideas on Fire for the index.

I presented many of the ideas in this book at various conferences and talks; I have also published some of the ideas in previous outlets. I am thankful to everyone who came to hear me discuss these ideas and for all the support and feedback that I received. Part of the chapter Reframing Family Rejection was previously published as Conditional Families and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Youth Homelessness: Gender, Sexuality, Family Instability, and Rejection in the Journal of Marriage & Family 80(2): 383–96. Likewise, part of the chapter New Lavender Scare was previously published as The Lavender Scare in Homonormative Times: Policing, Hyper-incarceration, and LGBTQ Youth Homelessness in Gender & Society 43(2): 210–32. I am also grateful to Jeffrey M. Poirier and Jama Shelton for their Child Welfare special issue on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity/Expression, and Child Welfare and for their support and feedback on my article Child Welfare Systems and LGBTQ Youth Homelessness: Gender Segregation, Instability, and Intersectionality in Child Welfare 96(2): 29–45. Many thanks to Angela Jones, Joseph DeFilippis, and Michael W. Yarbrough for organizing the After Marriage conference and the subsequent edited volumes, and for their support and feedback on my chapter ‘I Want to Be Happy in Life’: Success, Failure, and Addressing LGBTQ Youth Homelessness in The Unfinished Queer Agenda after Marriage Equality. Specifically, thank you to Angela Jones, who has always supported me in all that I do; I am grateful for the friendship we’ve built over the years.

A deep and special thank-you to Thrive Youth Center, without which this book would have been impossible. Sandra Whitley is a true angel. Sandy galvanized me every week during this project, and I hope I can someday be half the person that she is. Lauryn Farris is a firecracker and an amazing activist. Thank you, Lauryn, for the many great and insightful talks. Thank you as well to Chelsea, Maria, and Ray for all that you do. Another deep and special thank-you to LifeWorks. Laura Poskochil was a fierce supporter and advocate for this project. Laura energized me every week in all her labor of love. Thank you to Liz Schoenfeld for also supporting this project and to Gaby and Caitlin for being social work warriors. Thank you to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) for their support of this project. Catherine Farris was a fabulous point of contact within DFPS. Thank you as well to the Austin Children’s Shelter and Aja Gair. I feel so fortunate for meeting all the wonderful people who are doing the daily work of trying to make the world a better place.

Margaret and Ballard Robinson, I love you. I feel so honored every day to still have my amazing grandparents in my life. They made me who I am and have always been my biggest fans. To my mom, Tamara Blair, thank you for the optimism, and to my dad, Fred Robinson, thank you for the life lessons. To Sheri and Floyd Mount, thank you being there for me. Thank you to my other grandma, Emma Welch, for taking me in when I needed another home. You are missed. Katie Beran has been an amazing, loving friend. I do not know that I have ever met a kinder person. You balance me, Katie. To my godson, Kaeson, and my nieces, Rylee and Sydney, you inspire me to always keep working for social justice and social change. To my best friend, Kristin Bird, I love you. You keep me human, honest, and alive. Bird, you make me a better person.

To the LGBTQ youth in this study, thank you for everything. Y’all touched my life in unfathomable ways, and I will be forever changed by each and every one of you. Thank you for sharing your stories and for your heartfelt humanity. I wish the world for all of you. You are the reasons I wrote this book.

Introduction

COMING OUT TO THE STREETS

One day after my shift as a volunteer at a San Antonio shelter for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer (LGBTQ) youth experiencing homelessness, I opened my laptop and typed in the web address for Craigslist. During my volunteer shift the previous night, youth residing at the shelter had discussed seeing advertisements on the website by Camila and Zoe, two Hispanic heterosexual transgender women who, until recently, had been staying at the LGBTQ shelter. Staff had suspended them for doing drugs and missing curfew. I skimmed the personals section of the advertisements on Craigslist until I found their ad.¹ I found the following ad. It read: Pretty Ts Girls—t4m (Downtown) Hi guys I’m Camila, with black hair, 22 5´8 and I’m Zoe, with red hair, I’m 19, 5´5. We’re both transgender crossdressers. We trying to get a room for the night to chill, we’re laid back and looking to meet some cute guys. Looking to meet guys with party favors. Both versatile bottoms looking to have a drink, smoke some bud and have some fun.²

I had met Camila and Zoe while conducting fieldwork on LGBTQ youth homelessness in central Texas. Zoe’s story captures the complexities of youth homelessness. I first started coming out to the streets whenever I was thirteen, Zoe began, as we sat down for an interview a few months after she posted the Craigslist advertisement. Zoe grew up with a single mother. Her dad—whom Zoe called her sperm donor—went in and out of jail during Zoe’s childhood. He abused Zoe as well. At age thirteen, Zoe started doing drugs. She explained, The only reason I started doing dope was because I felt unwanted from my family. Gay was a big issue. Me liking boys was a big issue. I tried to kill myself by doing the dope—to hurt my family.

Zoe started taking hormones while living on the streets, but as her breasts grew, she wondered if she should continue. She feared how her family would react. I didn’t know how to come out to tell them that I want to be a girl. And I didn’t know if they were going to accept me, she explained.³ Well, this is my life. I am who I am. And if God didn’t want me to be this girl, he would’ve already tooken me. To emphasize her point, Zoe described a moment where she thought she might lose her life. I tried to steal my grandfather’s wallet, she recollected. I was messed up on heroin. Then I smoked crack. Then I drank Sex on the Beach—a whole bottle. And I was intoxicated. She continued, "Well, [my grandfather and I] started fighting, and I busted out the windows in his truck. Knocked his AC [air conditioner] unit out. Called my tia and said, ‘He’s going to shoot me. Papa’s going to shoot me.’ Well, he got that gun. And boom, he got me."⁴

She credited God for keeping her alive. But along with this harrowing family life, Zoe faced challenges outside the home as well. One of the hardest was her peers’ negative reactions to her expansive expressions of gender—expressions that clashed with dominant societal notions of masculine men and feminine women. I would dress up like a gangsta boy—muscle shirt, basketball shorts, she explained. And everyone thought I was a butch lesbian. People did not react well to this appearance. Choking up, she added, "[Smoking weed] numbed the pain from going to school. Numb the pain of people looking at me. People calling me a faggot. They don’t realize how hurtful the word faggot is."

In response to this bullying, school staff recommended that Zoe’s mom home-school her, which her mother had neither the time nor resources to do. In seventh grade, Zoe dropped out of school and started living on the streets. Eventually, she ended up in Child Protective Services (CPS). She told me, I got tooken away ’cause of the drug problems I had, and the state then sent her to a boy’s ranch [that] was like a behavioral place. Set in a wilderness environment, the ranch used Boy Scout philosophy to teach young men to accept authority, take personal responsibility for their actions, and build successful skills to return to the community.⁵ Zoe said she stayed at the ranch for about a year. Upon completing the program, she went back to living on the streets.

Street life, of course, came with its own difficulties. The police arrested Zoe no more than fifteen times, often for prostitution and public intoxication. These arrests kept her continuously going in and out of prison. And homelessness shelters provided no respite. I’d have to shower in the men’s [shelter bathroom], she explained. And I was afraid I was going to get raped. And [some of the men] would tell me that I don’t belong in there ’cause I’m a girl. And I’m like, I have to be clean. I can’t let these fucking men run me out of this fuckin’ shower.

Such discriminatory experiences toward LGBTQ youth, especially toward transgender and gender-expansive youth such as Zoe, commonly transpire in shelters. Partly in response to these experiences, an LGBTQ shelter opened in San Antonio to give LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness a safer space to sleep and shower and to provide them with specific LGBTQ services, such as hormone replacement therapy and helping them change their name and gender marker on their identification (ID) card. Acknowledging the importance of the LGBTQ shelter in her life, Zoe stated, I think . . . every state—all around the world—should have an LGBTQ spot.

Although it served as a refuge, the LGBTQ shelter also came with rules and regulations. One evening, Zoe went on an ice skating binge—slang for getting high on crystal meth—with Camila. Later that week, the director of the shelter drug tested them. When the test came back positive, the staff suspended them from the shelter for thirty days, which sent the young women back to the streets. That was when they posted the advertisements on Craigslist, seeking sex, drugs, and a place to stay.

THE LIVES BEHIND THE STATISTICS

Zoe’s story reveals the pervasive inequalities that exist in US society and that perpetuate youth homelessness. Generally, homelessness means lacking a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence. People experiencing homelessness sleep in shelters, on the streets, in abandoned buildings, at bus or train stations, and on friends’ couches, among other impermanent options.⁶ One in ten—around 3.5 million—youth, ages eighteen to twenty-five, experience homelessness each year in the United States.⁷

LGBTQ youth comprise around 40 percent of this youth homeless population, despite only comprising 5 to 8 percent of the US youth population.⁸ Furthermore, LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness face a host of obstacles, including physical and sexual victimization and mental health challenges.⁹ In one study, 58.7 percent of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth experiencing homelessness reported victimization, and 41.3 percent of that population reported depressive symptoms, including suicidal ideation.¹⁰ As captured in Zoe’s account, these challenges are exacerbated for transgender and gender-expansive youth experiencing homelessness, who have to navigate the gender segregation of shelters and services while facing other obstacles such as trying to obtain an ID card and clothing that aligns with their gender identity and gender expression.¹¹

The numbers and challenges paint a bleak picture.

But I wanted to learn about the lives behind the statistics. I wanted to know what feminists call lived experiences—the firsthand, everyday accounts of how marginalized people experience the world and the personal knowledge they gain from these experiences.¹² Specifically, I wanted to know about the perceived pathways into and experiences of homelessness for LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness.¹³ Learning about these lived experiences centers the youth’s voices, foregrounding what they identify as the main issues affecting them and the solutions to helping them. To document the youth’s lives and to learn from their lived experiences, I conducted eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in central Texas. I also interviewed forty LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness and ten service providers who worked with the youth.

Through doing this research, I found that LGBTQ youth homelessness involves more complicated processes than the usual narrative of coming out—or disclosing an LGBTQ identity—followed by parental rejection. Instead, LGBTQ youth homelessness often involves complex issues around gender expression and is not solely about the rejection of a child’s identity. LGBTQ youth homelessness involves the policing of expansive expressions of gender and how these practices intersect with sexuality, race, and class to influence the youth’s lives. These lives are simultaneously often marked by familial abuse, bullying, rejection, relegation to state child custody systems, drug use, violence, sex work, mental health challenges, encounters with police, criminal records, failure to get an ID card, the lack of a safe place to shower and sleep, and a host of other cumulative disadvantages.

These inequalities begin in childhood. Like most youth in this study, Zoe grew up amid poverty and instability. She felt unwanted because of her attraction to boys, and she feared disclosing that she was a girl. Despite these trepidations, Zoe took hormones, knowing that her changing body would probably further strain her familial relationships, which were already tenuous, as she had stolen money from her family for food and drugs. In effect, the problems of poverty and instability were compounded by Zoe’s feelings of being unwanted for her gender identity and expression.

LGBTQ youth homelessness, however, involves not only familial rejection, but also problems with other institutions and relationships. School peers bullied Zoe, using homophobic language. Instead of addressing the bullying, school staff put the onus on Zoe and her family to resolve the issue. Subsequently, state child custody workers sent Zoe to a residential behavioral center—the boy’s ranch—which did not affirm Zoe’s gender identity and expression.

Institutions often fail LGBTQ youth. Peers and authority figures, along with the gender-segregated layout of most institutions, often constrain and punish LGBTQ youth, particularly through gender policing and homophobia. These practices in turn create unsafe and violent spaces for LGBTQ youth. Poor Black and Brown LGBTQ youth, such as Zoe and most of the youth in this study, face the harshest consequences of these punishing practices, as structural racism and racial profiling exacerbate the surveillance and punishment that they contend with. Because of this punishment and bullying, youth such as Zoe ended up on the streets.

The punishment of gender expression and sexuality continues once the youth experience homelessness. Zoe said police profiled her as a sex worker, a common experience of transgender and gender-expansive people of color on the streets. This trans profiling led to police not only repeatedly stopping Zoe on the streets but also harassing her, ticketing her, checking her for warrants, and cycling her in and out of jail. Furthermore, social service organizations and governmental services for people experiencing homelessness often segregate sleeping and showering arrangements based on the gender binary. As a consequence, Zoe experienced violence in shelter bathrooms. To ameliorate some of these difficulties, she engaged in sex work and intimate encounters to obtain temporary shelter—often at a hotel—and to earn money and get drugs. Essentially, she used her sexuality and gender expression to obtain resources that society failed to provide to her.

While Zoe found respite from the violence of the streets at the LGBTQ shelter, staff regulated her and others’ behaviors, including their sexual behaviors, their gender expression (e.g., how they dressed), and their substance use. Zoe had a safer place to shower and sleep, and she could meet other LGBTQ people, access hormones, and obtain an ID with her name and gender marker changed, but she had to deal with new rules. If she did not adhere to the rules, she went back to sleeping on the streets. This contradiction of the shelter as an LGBTQ refuge from the violence of the streets, yet also a regulating institution that policed sexual behaviors and gender expressions, kept Zoe and other youth cycling through unsafe environments, including the streets, shelters, and jails. The cycle of homelessness continued.

THE LIMITS OF RIGHTS AND IDENTITY

While Zoe was living on the streets and in shelters, many people in the United States celebrated certain gains in civil rights for LGBTQ people. During this study—in June 2015—the US Supreme Court federally legalized same-sex marriage. Five years earlier, the federal government repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, allowing gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to serve openly in the military. Lawmakers in certain states and cities have also passed laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity and gender expression with regard to employment and housing. How, then, can we understand Zoe’s life and the lives of hundreds of thousands of other LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness during an era of same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ civil rights gains?

The gains in civil rights have not benefitted all LGBTQ people equally. A few months after the US Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, the people of Houston—in November 2015—voted to repeal the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, making Houston the largest US city without protections for LGBTQ people. A drive to repeal this ordinance involved fearmongering around transgender and gender-expansive people using public restrooms appropriate to their gender identity and/or expression. Other state and city legislatures have also introduced—and some successfully passed—bathroom bills to codify this public restroom discrimination